


A Crown of Lead

by sburbanite



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Derse/Prospit Royalty, Aspect powers, Bro is the one dying here, Gen, King Bro, Medievalstuck, No Smut, Prince Dirk
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 04:10:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8431330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sburbanite/pseuds/sburbanite
Summary: With a mad king, a struggling kingdom, and a dark influence choking the soul of his father, Prince Dirk has a lot to deal with.It's about to get much, much worse.Written as a prequel to A House Built and A Spark, A Flame, A Fire, this is the story of how Dirk became the reluctant King of Derse.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [callmearcturus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmearcturus/gifts), [uumiho](https://archiveofourown.org/users/uumiho/gifts), [sunflowerwonder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflowerwonder/gifts).
  * Inspired by [A Spark, A Flame, A Fire](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8118997) by [callmearcturus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmearcturus/pseuds/callmearcturus). 

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I have fallen in love with the A House Built universe, so I decided to show my gratitude for these wonderful works by writing a prequel. 
> 
> The series can be found [ here](http://archiveofourown.org/series/562778) and is my all time favourite Homestuck AU.

“I was wondering if you had any knowledge of where your father might be, your highness?”  
The chief of the Palace Guard fidgets uncomfortably with the buckles of his vambrace, trying his best not to look you in the eye. You wonder if he's aware of how embarrassed he looks; after all, he's not supposed to lose the King of Derse. That's pretty much his only fucking job, but you know your father well enough to bet that it isn't his fault. Bro can move like a shadow when he wants to, slipping past in broad daylight as if he had midnight to cloak him. You're the only one he can't hide from.

“He's down at the lake, in the woods on the south shore,” you reply, reaching out with your mind to the place where the King’s soul burns brightly. 

“My humblest thanks, Prince Dirk.” he replies, and gives a curt little bow before marching off as if wild dogs were at his heels. Evidently, he aims to keep his position, which will mean finding your father before your dear sister finds out they lost him. You're not going to rat him out, but he'll be lucky if a crow doesn't spot him tearing frantically through the undergrowth of the Dersian forest in search of his charge. 

You make a note to ask Roxy not to arrange to have anything humorously unpleasant put in his bed. Roxy, who tries her hardest to keep you and your tiny siblings safe. Who told the guards to keep a close watch on Broderick I for your family’s sake as much as his own.

There's something wrong with your father's soul. You can feel it flicker as you climb the cold stairs to Roxy’s tower; a candle flame where a raging torch once burned. Something dark is almost visible to your magical mind’s eye, in between the dancing flames. Something big and scaled and horrible. 

The palace is cold enough to make touching the tower handrail painful, even through your gloves. Even so, there's a fire burning cheerfully in the grate when you let yourself into Roxy’s eyrie, warming the room and its occupants. Dozens of beady eyes turn to face you, and you smile in response. The crows used to delight in teasing you when you were smaller. Now they know better. The oldest - a motheaten, one-eyed bastard - hops across the floor toward you and pecks at your shoe. You crouch and stroke the ruff of tattered feathers around his neck, and he croaks appreciatively before snapping at your fingers. 

“Nice to see you too, Jack,” you say, pulling them out of beak range. From behind the curtained doorway leading to the tower balcony, you can hear Roxy snickering. You stand up, ready to draw the curtain and let all of the room’s heat out, when she comes barrelling in; a grinning whirlwind of freezing hands, all of them trying to force their way into your clothing. 

“Goddamn it Roxy!”  
One of those hands finds an opening in your shirt, and your chest is suddenly cold as fuck. Roxy worms both of them in, ignoring your attempts to pry them out, until she’s using you as her own personal heater. 

“Dignified,” you say, raising an eyebrow at the so-called Princess of Derse. “You’re a real class act, sister of mine. No wonder you got yourself banned from court.”

Roxy sticks out her tongue. 

“As if I’m interested in a bunch of people lying through their teeth, Dirky. I get all the dirt without having to sit on a hard chair all day pretendin’ to be fascinated.”

Her cheeks are too red. It could just be coming in from the cold, but the empty wine pitcher and the giggle in her voice tell a different story. It seems you had no need to worry about her wrath falling on the palace staff. She’s slipping away into her work, sending her mind far and wide, and you can hardly blame her.

“Rox.” 

You don’t need to say more. Roxy can understand the language of crows, after all. She has no trouble reading the disapproval in your tone.

“What is it, Dirk? You don’t approve?”

There’s a tremor in her voice that chills you more than her hands. You wrap your arms around her, hold her steady. 

“My approval is neither here nor there. I’m worried about you, that’s all. Magic and wine...is that really a good combination?” 

The room is full of books; the accumulated magical knowledge of a thousand years of Dersian history. Roxy drinks it like water. Her soul is stained with it, curling patterns of ink crawling across the bright spark within her. 

“It helps...with the dreams.”

Roxy presses her face into your chest, smearing her makeup onto your clothes. The cage of words around her heart tightens imperceptibly, and you wish with all of your being that you could free her from it.

“Come and eat, it’s almost time for dinner. One more meal that needs to be carried all the way up here and the cook will tear his last remaining hair out.” 

You hold her hand all the way to the dining hall. 

***

Another family breakfast, another meal spent in icy silence. Roxy winces at every scrape of silverware, not that your Father notices. Dave squirms in his seat, excited and uncomfortable. Rose looks only at her plate. They’re three years old and already afraid of the world. Their nursemaid helps them eat, but there’s not as much on their plates as you’d like.

At the head of the table, King Broderick spears a piece of cooked meat with his knife and proceeds to slice it to shreds. You watch from the corner of your eye, pretending to be consumed with your own plate. Unfortunately, nothing goes unnoticed by you father these days. He has more eyes in the palace than Roxy, although none of them are mortal. 

“You got a problem, girl?” he snaps. 

Roxy says nothing. What can she say, after all? Talking back to a king is never wise, even if he’s your father. She lowers her eyes, and the freezing silence descends again. Your father doesn’t eat. You wonder how long he’s been subsisting on weak beer and endless rage. However long it is, it can’t be good. 

He wasn’t always like this. He was always quiet, always impossible to read, but there used to be humor in his amber eyes. Eyes like yours. There was tenderness sometimes, too. A ruffle of your hair when you were younger, a compliment for Roxy when she nailed a distant target with her rifle. You don’t recognise the person looking across the table, the person looking out from behind those familiar eyes. It’s not your father. It’s not your king, either, and that is a much more serious problem. 

Without a word, Broderick leaves the table, his chair scraping loudly against the stone floor. His eyes linger on Dave for a few seconds as he stands in the doorway, and then he's gone. 

You don't breathe an audible sigh of relief, but Roxy doesn't bother suppressing hers. Dave is practically bursting to speak, and you smile at him to let him know it's allowed.

“Di’k, I founna huge bug, you gotta see it! Issas big as this,” Dave holds his pudgy little hands as far apart as they'll go, “an Rose screamed an Nuss screamed but I didn’t scream an I got it wiff a glass.”

“I did not scream, you did!” Rose interjects, giving him a shove, “and you cried! And his name is Dirk, not Dick. Nurse said you mustn’t call people that. That's a bad word.”

Roxy falls about giggling, and you laugh at the mirrored expressions of indignation on the twins’ faces. You stand up and reach across the stack of bread and butter to offer Dave your fist, and he raises a little fist to touch it; your own little not-so-secret brothers’ handshake. 

“I look forward to it, bro. I bet it's the biggest bug I've ever seen.” 

Rose pouts, annoyed at being left out, so you take her hand in yours and raise it as you would a fair lady’s.

“Forgive me, princess, I meant no offense,” you say, playing up the courtly manners you learned as a child.

She turns her nose up at you, before nodding graciously. 

“I won't have you killed today, but don't do it again,” she says, and this time you manage to stop the laugh threatening to burst out of your chest. You thank her instead, with a gracious little bow.

The rest of the meal is spent watching the children's mortified nursemaid helping the young royals to eat while frantically explaining why they should never threaten to have their older brother executed. For a little while, the dark cloud over your life clears away. A lot of “why’s” and “how come’s” later, someone taps you gently on the shoulder. Arren, the Court Steward, looks down at you with weary eyes.

“The King has once again declined to see any of the people, your lordship. Some have come a long way with desperate problems, and I cannot in good conscience send them away.”

This will be the third time you've covered for your father, and you dare to hope that the people will be less visibly worried, less disappointed to be presented with a child playing dress-up in adult finery. It should be Roxy, she's the heir to the throne, but her one and only attempt ended with her cheering on a fistfight between two disgruntled landowners. After that, the Stewards turned to you. All you can ever do is nod magnanimously and have the Court scribe note down the people's concerns, but they seem to leave satisfied. You have no fucking clue how Arren deals with all of the disputes and accusations and entreaties afterward. Holding court is being tied to a throne while people unburden their woes onto you until you, laying them on your shoulders until you feel like you're drowning. 

Dave complains bitterly as you leave the room; he had your attention and now it's been snatched away from him. Somehow the memory of his cries haunt you throughout the day, as lost soul after lost soul tears off a piece of you with their words.

****

It's late when you return to your chambers, your back and hindquarters aching from sitting for so long. Roxy is waiting for you on the long couch, sipping a cup of tea. The candles have burned low; Arren kept you longer than usual to show you the various scrolls and ledgers that will need to be adjusted to ensure that the northern parts of Derse won't starve over the winter. The implications of this don't go unnoticed, by you or by Roxy. Despite the relaxed surroundings, she is as tense as coiled wire.

“How was today's snoozefest?” She asks.

“Just as dull as ever. People need food, someone stole some sheep or fucked somebody’s wife, or possibly the other way around. I don't remember.”

She pours you some tea, the scent of it filling the room with flowers. It's the sort that will help you to sleep, and will keep away the nightmares. You take the cup Roxy offers, and note the weariness in her eyes. 

“Is Arren planning something? I mean, should we be worried? I dunno what the fuck we do if the answer is yes. It's not like pops is gonna be any help.”

You think back, forcing open the rusty jaws of your memory. Could the ancient Steward be planning to install you in place of your father? The man's eyes had lit up with hope when you showed a polite hint of interest in affairs of state, but that had been about it.

“Nah, I think he was just glad someone was listening to him for once.”

Roxy nods and sits back, sipping at her tea. You're relieved it's not wine. You take your own cup and sit by her, leaning into her the way you did when you were children.

“What do we do?” you ask.

“I have no idea,” she murmurs in reply.

The pair of you sit for a while, sipping tea and letting the warmth of the fire suffuse you. Roxy smells like scrubbing salts and soap, a sure sign that she's been doing something messy with the twins. The thought makes you smile. You move to put your feet up on the low lounge table, protocol be fucked, when something moves in the corner of your eye. Under one of Roxy’s wide-mouthed wine glasses, in pride of place on the mantelpiece, is the biggest spider you have ever seen.

“Holy shit.” you mutter, prying yourself out of the couch’s embrace and getting to your feet. 

It's almost as big as your fist. You shudder as it makes a futile break for freedom, pressing its long legs against the glass.

“Dave really caught this thing?”

“Yup. Seems that way. He likes animals, apparently, and he ain't fussy about the number of legs. The maid that brought it over, on the other hand, looked she was gonna be sick.”

“Nice. I'll have to give him a title: Prince David Strider, slayer of creepy crawlies.”

Roxy shakes her head and laughs, wagging a finger playfully at you. 

“Not a bit of it, he doesn't want a hair on it's gross fat body harmed. He’s gonna come get it tomorrow so he can let it go.”

You watch the spider rotate inside its prison, feeling for an exit that isn't there. Setting it free never once occurred to you. If you’d have found this creature instead of Dave, it would be little more than crushed remains by now. You suppose that's the difference between the Princes of Derse.

Roxy hugs you goodnight before she leaves for bed, squeezing you tightly as if she wishes she could stay. You used to crawl into her bed when you were scared, back when you were Dave's age. That comfort is lost to you, snatched away by age and responsibility, but the gentle kiss she plants on your cheek goes some way toward making up for it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I realized not a lot happened in that first chapter so here's chapter two as well...

The next day, a loud knock on your chamber door wakes you, and you find a servant hovering anxiously in the doorway. Her lip is bitten red, her apron creased where it's been bunched in her hands. 

“Yes?” You say, resisting the urge to rub the sleep from your eyes.

“Begging your pardon, your highness, your father has asked...um, rather ordered for you to be fetched and brought before him.”

Her words are a cascade of sound, seeping slowly into your sleep-fogged brain. Something seems off, like this is a dream. It's only when you notice that the drapes are still closed that the candle the servant is carrying begins to make sense.

“What time is it?” 

“I don't have the exact hour your highness, sir, but the roosters are still, well, roosting.”

It's the middle of the night, then, some godforsaken hour chosen as a good time to catch you off-guard. You dismiss the girl, who leaves with a grateful curtsy, and proceed to dress yourself, slowly and carefully.

You may be royalty, but that doesn't mean you respect your father any more than the average peasant boy respects his drunkard sire. Probably a little less, in fact. He may have pulled you out of bed, but he's going to have to wait for his audience with the Prince of Derse.

The guards enter your room when you have one foot into your trousers, and they don't hesitate when they see your state of undress. The head of the Palace Guard, the man you aided just the other day, won't meet your eyes as he motions for his men to take your arms and hold them firm. Your protests and threats are ignored. Your struggles are subdued by more grasping hands. You cease only when you are being carried through the castle halls in only your tunic and undergarments. 

Your face burns with rage and embarrassment. You are a Prince, a fucking _Prince_ , and your father has gone too fucking far this time. By the time the guards dump you gently onto the carpet in front of the throne, your blood is boiling with fury. 

Broderick is sitting, leaning calmly on one arm of the throne as if he’s attending a boring banquet. He doesn't flinch when you march up the steps toward him, doesn't hesitate to dart a hand out and slap you so hard across the cheek that your ears ring. Pain blooms across your face, spreading into your neck, your skull, the soft parts behind your eyes. Put simply, it hurts like a son of a bitch. You reel backward, your back-foot finding only empty air, and tumble onto your ass at the foot of the stairs. 

His lip curls upward, a slight movement that you know means he’s disgusted with you. That makes two of you, then, because you feel like slapping yourself too.

“Get up.”

Broderick’s voice is a deep growl, the sound that something predatory makes before it pounces on its prey. Your body responds without any input from your brain, snapping your aching muscles to attention.

“What, in the name of the unnamed horrors, is all of this about, father?” you ask, voice as as monotone as you can make it.

It was a deliberately ironic phrasing, one that would have made him smile once upon a time. Now he merely glares at you, his brows knitted beneath the circlet of platinum that serves as the kingdom's everyday badge of office. You’re half surprised he didn't indulge in the crenellated spectacle of the full ceremonial crown. The bastard seems like he's in the mood for dramatics tonight. Broderick lounges on the throne like a jungle cat, all lazy muscle and deadly potential. Within him, his soul burns with dark flames. You decide to wait for him to show his claws before you speak.

“So. I heard you've been playing at being king,” he says, his voice a careful monotone.

A dozen sharp retorts leap to mind, but you squash them down inside yourself. The angry ghost of the blow he landed on your face helps with that. You stare him down instead, and let the silence hang heavily over the room.

Broderick glances casually at his fist, at the red knuckles he used to strike his own son.

“Arren has been dealt with. From now on, there is to be no court in Derse without the King. Have you forgotten who that is, boy?”

You shake your head, continue to say nothing.

He rises from the throne and walks toward you, a hand raised to your face to rub his thumb over the red marks forming on your cheek. He's a head taller than you at least, at least fifty pounds heavier. The King turns, ready to leave you standing alone and half-dressed in the throne room, but something in you makes you open your mouth and damn yourself.

“What of the people, then?” you ask, picturing the farmers who stood before you with bones starkly visible in their hands and faces. Those people didn't have time for their King to have a mental breakdown.

“The northern province is flooded, their crops have rotted in the soil. If you don't see them, don't help them, they'll starve to death.”

Your King whirls around to face you, and for a second you think he’s going to hit you again. Instead, he just motions to one of the guards. 

“That's not your concern, _prince_. You’re not the King, and you're never gonna be. You're a spare, just another royal brat that does nothing but steal the food out of the mouths of those people you care so much for. You're confined to your room. If I ever see you again, it'll be the last thing you see.”

With that, your once beloved father exits the throne room and leaves you in the gentle hands of the guards. This time you let them lead you back your room. When they leave, locking the door to your gilded prison behind them, you allow the reality of things to creep back in.

No more hide and seek with the twins. No more tea with your dear sister. No more rides in the woods, the crisp snow laid out before you like a perfect blanket. No more freedom. 

Oh, and your Father threatened to kill you if he ever lays eyes on you again.

You crawl back into your bed but sleep eludes you, slipping out of reach beyond the walls of your jail cell.

***

Days pass, one blurring into another as food is deposited and taken away, barely touched. At first, you try and engage them in some kind of conversation, asking about your siblings or the state of the Kingdom, but they won't respond. Reminding them of your royal status just makes them wince and leave more swiftly. 

Denied human contact, you start to feel itchy beneath your skin. The constant, unending boredom of imprisonment is bad enough, but without so much as a word from another human being you begin to go stir crazy. There are a wealth of entertainment options in your main chamber, games and books and half finished projects in wooden chests. None of it satisfies you.

Instead of reading or sleeping, you spend most of your hours staring out of the window into the small southern courtyard, hoping to catch a glimpse of your family. You can close your eyes and feel them out there, glowing points in your mindscape that flicker and flare with their mood, as you can with anyone you care deeply about.A visiting Magi once told you that you did not sense the souls of others, but rather the pieces of yourself you've placed inside them by loving them. As a child you thought this was stupid, just mystic nonsense from a man who wore a dress. When your mother passed, slowly and painfully from an unknown malady, you watched the fire inside her shrink until the day it guttered and winked out completely. It hurt, deep in your chest, and you had started to think that the old man could be right.

If that's the case, the fact that your Father's dark flame still dances at the corners of your senses makes you feel sick. You don't love him, you tell yourself, how could you after he threatened to kill you? 

You don't see Arren’s light. The steward was a trusted acquaintance, but he wasn't family. He could be alive or dead, you have no way of knowing, and without him to guide the King’s hand, the kingdom is in a similarly precarious position.

All of the others are subdued, as if a shadow lies over them. More than that, they're not enough. You want more than anything to see them. Keeping watch at the window like a lonely princess fills the hours, and grants occasional glimpses of your family.

Roxy crosses the hard ground slowly on the first day of your sentence, but she doesn't look up at your window. You suppose she has probably been warned not to. Every day thereafter, a large crow visits to tap on your window, just as the sun goes down. You make sure to give it a thumbs up to let it know you're doing OK. 

The twins heed no warnings to avoid engaging you, if they were given any. On the fifth day, their nursemaid attempts to usher them swiftly across the courtyard to the stable block, but they stop and wave frantically at your window. You wave back, pressing the other hand against the glass, and Dave jumps up and down with excitement. For the first time in days, you smile. The nurse quickly takes Dave by the hand and leads him away, and scoops a screaming, kicking Rose under her arm when she refuses to move. 

That's all you see of them until the twentieth day of your imprisonment.


End file.
